After years Naxalite menace in a large part of central and eastern India with security centric measures, the Centre has finally realised that the problems of the forest dwellers, the tribal inhabitants of these areas, will have to be paid special attention to deal with the issue.
As a first step towards understanding the entire gamut of the problem, the three ministries, home, forest and environment, have jointly called a meeting of non-government experts and other people and agreed to listen to them.
On August 7, the meeting with the theme of 'Combating Extremists Challenge in Forest Area' will be held in Delhi where Union home minister P Chidambaram will chair the session and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is also likely to be present for a brief period.
The interesting part is that besides hearing out experts, the government has agreed to listen to the people at the lower rung of the forest administration to have a firsthand knowledge of the ground realities. As a part of that exercise, three DFOs have been invited from various parts of the Naxalite-infested forest areas to share their observations in regard to the impact of the government policies on the forest and the forest dwellers, the tribals.
In the past 20 years or so, the growth and spread of the Naxalites took place largely in the forest areas of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and West Bengal.
It is home for various tribal communities and the Naxalites are increasingly using them in their ranks and often as shields against the anti-Naxalite drive by the security forces.
According to one expert, who has been invited to take part in the meeting, stress would be given on understanding causal relations between indiscriminate leasing out of mines in the forest areas and marginalisation of the tribals.
Incidentally, these areas where the Naxalite are practising their politics of violence, are having rich deposits of minerals like iron ore, bauxite, coal, mica and copper ore.
It has been observed by security agencies that while other development works in those areas suffered heavily owing to the growing Naxalite menace, the lease holders of mines have mostly been allowed to run their operations without much trouble. Sources in both Naxalite outfits and industry indicate that the peace is bought over by making a regular payment to them.
So far, mainstream political parties have not paid much attention to indiscriminate mining in forest land have steadily displaced the tribals causing them to lose their livelihood and alienate them from their own environment.
Earlier, noted social scientist Walter Fernandez had studied this aspect and came out with a telling report saying that at least 60 million people have been displaced from their land between 1947 and 2004 for various development projects like mines, steel plants, reservoirs, railway lines of which 40 per cent are tribals, highly disproportionate to their population.
